The Singing Monks

I sing in a 140-voice community chorus, The Outer Cape Chorale and a smaller group from within that, the Chamber Singers. I love the time we spend together, the music we produce, and the way my mind and body are engaged by it all.

My choral director, Allison Beavan sent me this healing story when I told her I'd been getting weepy over the loss of singing together due to covid19. I'm sorry if I'm jumping around time-wise, but it seems like the right thing to put out for now:

...Did I ever tell you the true story about the singing monks?  They sang for hours each day - chanting. Their leader died or left or something.  The new leader arrived and did not like to sing so he cut the singing way way down.  Next thing they knew, monks began to become sick. Experts were brought in.  Mold?  Food? What could be causing these illnesses - and so much illness?  Long story short, they finally tried to determine what had changed and of course it was the singing.  The consultant instructed them to sing and you guessed it; the illnesses started to abate.  This has been documented and researched by musicologists and psychiatrists, etc.

They still don't know if it's literally vibrations in the body, if it heals the soul or soothes the psyche. They haven't figured it out...still.  But they do know it worked and was healing...

I've just finished singing along to a Youtube performance of Vivaldi's Gloria, something Allison recommended as a substitute for the glorious experience of singing together. It helped, and will have to do, for now.

The Ordeal

Trigger warning: Graphic images of medical procedures

After cervical cancer, what of life and sex? To say I was filled with trepidation is no exaggeration. The reproductive system is at the most foundational chakra, the root, the source of survival, the furnace. Mine had been burned in order to heal, and as I recovered from the physical trauma, I wondered if I'd ever be brave enough to risk intimacy again. Had my relationship lasted through treatment, we might have used an existing connection to gradually explore my new limits. But I was on my own. The doctors couldn't tell me anything, couldn't predict how I'd move forward with this terribly private moment in my life. They could only do what they could do. 

What they did was irradiate my cervix both from the outside, and later, the inside of my body. The internal radiation was an ordeal hard to describe in words. They positioned a tiny pellet of radioactive material in my vagina, held in place by what seemed to me a combination speculum and locking wrench. That sounds horrible, I know. It was. It was packed in with layers of gauze while I was under sedation, and the plan was for it to remain there for 48 hours. But because the external radiation had changed the shape of things around the cervix, they couldn't place it in an ideal position, so that 48 turned into 55 hours of me lying nearly perfectly still and waiting. I was so afraid it would burn through the surrounding organs. The room I was in had a big radiation sign on the door, a terrible warning: danger. 

Most of the women who cared for me had to be over the age of childbearing, and none could stay in the room for more than a few moments. I remember being so grateful to the woman who genty rolled me on my side and rubbed lotion onto my back. She told me it would be OK to cry, but I told her it hurt too much to cry. I stared at the roses my (still) girlfriend had sent instead. One young nurse who did happen to tend me admired them wistfully, as though she'd never been given roses. I told her she'd have plenty someday. She told me it was unusual for flowers to survive in this room. I can only assume the vase was made of lead glass. Or it was one of my spirit guides watching over.

I listened to cassette tapes of guided meditations and visualizations, a lifeline, a hope. This was back when we listened to cassette tapes.

When the 55 hours was over, they gave me an even larger dose of the pain killers they'd had me on, and Dr. Bornstein brought in a heavy little metal canister, like a small garbage can on casters. She began removing the gauze packing the way clowns pull out endless bright scarves from their pockets. A minute, maybe only half a minute into this, I begged her to stop, but she continued, saying it was best to get it over with. Then she told me to say a few Hail Marys. I was too shocked by the whole thing, but remember thinking it was inappropriate to tell me to talk about Mary...Blessed be the fruit of thy womb, Jesus... Mine had been fried, thank you very much. But as I said, too overwhelmed, I didn't tell her so. Finally she took the whole thing out, and, in a truly frightening move practically threw it into this canister and slammed the lid shut. As if she were handling hot coals or a venomous snake.

Finally, I was allowed to get out of the bed, use the toilet, wash myself a little. Gingerly. I'd survived, and my bladder still worked.

One week later at our follow-up exam (ouch), I broached the subject of the Hail Marys with the doctor, saying I'd had some trouble with that. She looked at me quizzically and asked what a Hail Mary was. She told me she was Jewish and had never heard of such a prayer. I distinctly heard her, in her voice, but she couldn't have said it. I can only believe someone was speaking through her. On my way back to Provincetown that afternoon, I did say a few Hail Marys.


When the time came for me to take a lover again, I explained to her as much as I could, and somehow we managed. Though our time together was a summer romance, she'll always have a special place in my heart.

The Garden

I had just about zero energy, but as I said, I was falling in love with my condo. It has a bit of land that I can use for myself. It's not huge, but it's still something. Somewhere along the way, I got a membership in a gardening book club, and began studying organic gardening. I learned about compost, mulch, soil additives and what to plant where. I was like many a young Lesbian, thinking it would be great to grow my own food. I started with herbs like lavender and thyme. My basil didn't go very well at all, as I'm on the north side of the condo complex. But I kept at it. As I'd run low on money, I started with seeds. The seed catalogs were mesmerizing. I ordered a bunch that looked promising. I'd hover over the seed trays, spritz them with water, move them around in the empty room upstairs to catch the sun. I thought I could grow begonias from seed. Hah. Tiny little things that bore no resemblance to the lush illustrations in the seed catalogs. Ah well. Live and learn.

I learned that seaweed is a great soil additive, with natural growth hormones, great water retention properties (very important in my little Cape Cod patch of sand) and an all-around good mulch. The lilies I planted loved it. Like the Herring Cove pebbles, seaweed from the East End Flats is free, so I'd don my sturdiest boots and scramble over the rip rap with a plastic garbage bag and load it carefully into my new car to bring home. My neighbors got used to the sight of me lurking in the garden at all hours with the hose trained on my new babies. Babies? Hmm.

One investment I made was in a kwanzan cherry tree, maybe five or six feet tall and slender, with a few branches. I love their fluffy, pink blossoms in the spring. I planted it myself. It's one of the great successes in my garden, now three stories tall, glorious in May. One year, I heard a strange chattering sound out my window, so I went upstairs to look. I opened the blinds and was shocked to find a female raccoon swaying in the breeze at the top of the cherry tree, pursued by not one but four males. She looked concerned. I didn't now what to do about it, so I closed the blinds and left them to it.

Nesting

Once I moved into my new condo, I found I was falling in love with it. I'd only rented apartments or cottages until then, so this was an adventure. I began by shopping. I had some money left after buying the condo and car, and oddly, I wasn't going to be eligible for disability insurance if I had too much money in the bank. It was bizarre. So, though I was very easily exhausted by a drive to Hyannis where the stores were, I went, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone, and bought things I needed for the house. I began with an oriental rug for the living room. Then a mattress for the old brass bed I'd found somewhere, and wonderfully soft sheets and duvet. This was critical, as I was spending a lot of time in bed when I wasn't shopping. 

I brought Terry with me to tell me what to get for the kitchen. She'd been cooking for people with AIDS, making macrobiotic meals in someone's basement kitchen, and I knew she knew way more about what I'd need. It was an education. It also felt like I was shopping for a wedding, sans spouse. Yeah, that girlfriend and I were history by this time. China patterns. cookware, knives. I compromised on some things I didn't really need, like fancy silverware. My design sense said Japanese stainless with wooden handles, my budget said stainless made in America. I needed everything, down to the map-of-the-world shower curtain I just had to have.

When I went to the car dealership I brought Adrienne, who took a turn at test driving the one I eventually settled on. She drove it like a race car driver, scaring me a little, but I was pleased with how the thing handled. Again, not a Ferrari, but a perfectly good Honda. This was the first new car I'd ever owned, and it was a heady experience to buy it with a single check. The dealer fairly drooled. I only later regretted I was in such a hurry to have it that I told them I didn't need air conditioning, which would take a few days to install. Instead, Adrienne and I went to the mall for a couple of hours while they detailed it (again, shopping for more stuff) then drove the thing home. It was really stupid not to get air conditioning, as I was embarking on 23 years worth of hot flashes. They started three days into the radiation treatments. 

Right about that time, I began having baby dreams. I'd never thought about having children, but there they were, baby dreams. They made me sad. Loss is loss, no matter how you look at it.

It went on and on that summer until I had run the bank account down to the right level. What happened then was that I was in acquisition mode with no outlet. I needed to bring more things home. So I began going to Herring Cove Beach every day, picking up bags of smooth flat pebbles for the space under my outdoor faucet. It's amazing how many rocks one needs to cover a 4'X4' area. I chose soft gray lozenge shaped ones and pearly white round ones.